Summer is on its way; there are a million things you want to do, other than work. For anyone, from management to the C-suite, it can be difficult to stay motivated. After all, you are expected to motivate and encourage your team through their periods of demotivation. I’ve come up with a few ideas. They aren’t revolutionary, but I do hope you will find them —motivating.

Love Your Work

Loving your job is not only “nice-to-have”, rather it is essential to our overall well-being. After all, the workplace is the where we spend most our waking hours. Being unhappy at work leads to being unhappy at home, which is pervasive in our society. At some point in our lives, we have all worked at a job that we didn’t necessarily enjoy. It paid the bills and kept you busy but could you imagine spending the rest of your life there? Being at a job that you don’t love can not affect you both mentally and physically, and it can also impact the company that you work for.

Believe in What You Do

In today’s cynical world, it is a great feeling to believe that what you do is changing other’s lives for the better. Entire companies are founded on this principle alone. It is also one of the driving factors behind Millennial recruitment. The opportunity to do good doesn’t end at the office; studies show that companies who engage the community around them are growing at faster rates and enjoying higher job satisfaction scores than companies who are not as altruistic and involved.

Make People Proud

Be the kind of boss that your employees are proud to work for. Create a culture that your employees are proud to call their own. Also, find pride in your team. Acknowledge their contributions and let them know you are proud of their accomplishments, as well.

Focus on the Big Picture

When the day-to-day is too mundane or repetitive, it can be very demotivating. By focusing on the big picture goals you, your team, or your company have set, you can find the motivation you need to lead.

Staying motivated in today’s business environment can be difficult. Yes, there will always be times you’ll lose heart, get busy, or become tired. But when you take responsibility for motivating yourself and others, you are better able to lead, inspire, reach your goals and leave a mark. What is more motivating than that?

Our strategy focuses on enabling our clients to recruit the right people for the structure in which they will perform. Please contact us to learn more about our expertise in Executive Search for Commercial Leadership positions in Medical Device and Biotechnology; including Marketing, Strategy, Sales Leadership, Training, Development, etc. We look forward to the opportunity to help you consistently improve your performance and your business!

It turns out; our mothers may have been onto something when they said, “you are going to give me a heart attack.” Data from the Interheart study is supportive of the theory that you can significantly increase the risk of a cardiac event like AMI, simply by experiencing anger or emotional upset of any kind.

There has always been anecdotal evidence that suggests stress contributes to the onset of AMI. However, there has never been a study of note that sought to determine the range of emotions capable and to solidify once and for all that you can indeed “give yourself a heart attack.” Other questions posed in this study were whether extreme physical activity could also be a trigger for AMI in susceptible patients.

About the Study

The case-controlled global study evaluated data from 12,461 cases of patients diagnosed with their first AMI. Results were filtered for those patients who admitted experiencing a triggering event, not more than one hour before the onset of symptoms. The cases were then sorted into groups according to the emotional or exertional trigger. The findings were:

6% of AMI patients who had recently engaged in intense physical activity were at a 7.7% greater risk of AMI.

% were either angry or emotional showed an increase in cardiac events by 8.5%.

The overlapping group of patients experiencing both did show a further increased risk.

The study concluded with the determination that patients experiencing physical exertion, extreme emotional lability, or both exhibited a higher risk for first AMI, regardless of gender, race, age, or other effect modifiers.

Recommendations for the General Population

Since the study only included patients with a first AMI, it is important to apply the findings to the general population. The study author advises that going forward; doctors should inform their patients about the potential risk that emotional extremes pose. Patients should be urged to minimize exposure to emotional triggers and have solid strategies in place to help them cope more effectively with their anger, should it occur.

Our strategy focuses on enabling our clients to recruit the right people for the structure in which they will perform. Please contact us to learn more about our expertise in Executive Search for Commercial Leadership positions in Medical Device and Biotechnology; including Marketing, Strategy, Sales Leadership, Training, Development, etc. We look forward to the opportunity to help you consistently improve your performance and your business!

The standard approach for chemotherapy is to apply the maximum tolerable dose of the drug or combination of drugs with the goal of eliminating the cancer tumor. But a group of researchers at Oregon State University, along with some scientists in the UK, have developed a different approach to cancer treatment, according to Science Daily. While the goal of achieving total remission of cancer remains the same, the intermediate step is to control the tumor, inhibiting its growth, and thus treating cancer as a chronic disease.

One example of how that approach works is to use two drugs used to treat ovarian cancer in tandem, paclitaxel, which attacks the cancer cells directly, and rapamycin, which inhibits the growth of cancer cells and the blood vessels that nourish them. The drugs are delivered at one-tenth to one-third of the maximum tolerable dosage using a nanoparticle delivery system that precisely hits the tumor and leaves the surrounding tissue unmolested.

The problem with standard chemotherapy is that it often has to be paused for the patient to recover from the side effects. The pause can allow the cancer time to reassert itself. The new method can be delivered continuously because the toxicity for the patient has been reduced to almost zero. It allows the patient’s natural ability to maintain health and assist in the fight against the cancer.

The research is promising and will likely be applicable to a variety of complicated and hard to treat cancers. It could constitute a new type of cancer treatment that will be easier for the patient to tolerate, as it will have fewer side effects.

Our strategy focuses on enabling our clients to recruit the right people for the structure in which they will perform. Please contact us to learn more about our expertise in Executive Search for Commercial Leadership positions in Medical Device and Biotechnology; including Marketing, Strategy, Sales Leadership, Training, Development, etc. We look forward to the opportunity to help you consistently improve your performance and your business!

Many experts believe that AI will ultimately prove to be cheaper, more efficient, and more impartial than humans. This scenario may seem like a cause for concern for managers. You can relax though. Machines will not be taking your jobs anytime soon. However, the emergence of machine learning in the management space does mean that you will be able to focus your skills and efforts on the things only humans can do. Regardless of how you feel about the rise of artificially intelligent machines, change is coming and sooner than you think. A recent Harvard Business Review article proposed that managers will begin to see significant developments related to their corporate roles in the very near future. Here are a few ways that AI could impact your job during the next few years.

1. AI Will Take-on Your Admin Tasks

According to one survey, managers at all levels spend over half their time on administrative and control tasks. These include shifts in scheduling due to illness, vacation, retirements, and departures. As a manager, these responsibilities are time-consuming and tend to shift your focus off of the more business critical aspects of your day to day. It is fortunate then that this is the area experts see AI affecting the most. AI directed applications will be able to automate many of these tasks, finding solutions that aren’t readily apparent to us.

2. AI Will Write Your Reports

Recently, the Associated Press increased the information in its quarterly reports over 800 percent with the help of AI-driven software. Imagine similar technology like this drafting your next management report. If you have ever scaled back reporting metrics because you simply didn’t have the time or ability to create actionable reports, you can see the value. This technology is already available in some BI dashboarding and data analytics reporting tools. For example, the data analytics company Tableau has partnered with Narrative Science, a maker of natural language generation devices. The result is Narratives for Tableau, which recently debuted in the form of a Chrome extension that uses AI to create written explanations for many Tableau graphics automatically.

3. AI Will Become Your Key Problem Solver and Most Trusted Consultant

AI will be able to uncover and adopt new key performance indicators to drive business. Because of AI’s unlimited capacity to analyze and interpret multiple data points simultaneously, it can discover new criteria for success including opportunities for collaboration, strategic alliances, information sharing, learning through virtual experimentation or “what if scenarios,” and decision-making. In essence, it will enable you to reach beyond your organization for insights and solutions.

4. AI Will Take Over Training and Onboarding

We are already utilizing computers for training. AI’s software enabled with biometrics will be the future of training. Biometrics will allow natural interactions between humans and machines. This includes among many other things, facial, emotion, and touch recognition, as well as speech, and body language interpretation.

Already, future managers and business leaders pursuing MBA’s are being taught to work with AI. Harvard Business has made classes on AI a requirement for its MBA program. NYU’s Stern School of Business is offering courses related to basic data handling as well as programming languages like Python. This is in addition to the required introduction to machine learning course. At MIT Sloan School of Management, MBAs are offered electives on AI and robotics. Business schools are putting more emphasis on artificial intelligence and data science because it is rapidly becoming an essential skill for management.

Our strategy focuses on enabling our clients to recruit the right people for the structure in which they will perform. Please contact us to learn more about our expertise in Executive Search for Commercial Leadership positions in Medical Device and Biotechnology; including Marketing, Strategy, Sales Leadership, Training, Development, etc. We look forward to the opportunity to help you consistently improve your performance and your business!

One of the nightmare scenarios being faced by medical researchers is the advent of so-called superbugs that are resistant to antibiotics. Some have suggested that the development is so dire that the world faces a prospect of plagues of these superbugs killing millions in the latter part of this century unless a solution is found.

Some researchers at Oregon State University think they may have found an answer to superbugs. They have developed a molecule called peptide-conjugated phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomer or PPMO for short that helps to overcome the resistance of superbugs to anti-biotics. It inhibits the expression of an enzyme called New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase, or NDM-1 that is accompanied by genes that give a superbug its resistance to anti-biotics.

The researchers have tested the molecule in vitro in combination with a common antibiotic called meropenem to fight three different types of bacteria that have the NDM-1 enzyme. They also conducted a mouse study that showed that a combination of PPMO and meropenem was effective in combating a resistant strain of E. coli.

One of the problems with the advent of superbugs is that researchers are running out of antibiotics that are capable of killing them. The more drugs that are used to combat bacteria, the more they evolve to resist them. So, instead, the OSU researchers have found a way to attack the resistance mechanism itself and cause old antibiotics to become productive again. No word exists yet when this breakthrough in biotechnology will start human trials or when it will be available in a clinical setting.

Our strategy focuses on enabling our clients to recruit the right people for the structure in which they will perform. Please contact us to learn more about our expertise in Executive Search for Commercial Leadership positions in Medical Device and Biotechnology; including Marketing, Strategy, Sales Leadership, Training, Development, etc. We look forward to the opportunity to help you consistently improve your performance and your business!

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